Simon Schindler

Feelings for the Suffering of Others and the Environment: Compassion Fosters Proenvironmental Tendencies

Recent research has shown that compassionate feelings for the suffering environment promote conservation of nature. We extend this notion and relate compassion for suffering humans to proenvironmental tendencies. The proposed relation should hold true as compassion elicits moral actions and judgments across different moral domains which should also be applicable to the environment. Therefore, we expect compassion for other humans to relate positively to proenvironmental tendencies. Two studies were conducted to test this assumption. Study 1 included three independent samples (final N = 2,096) and several measures of proenvironmental tendencies. Results revealed that compassion was indeed positively related to proenvironmental values, proenvironmental intentions, and reported donations to nature or environmental organizations. In Study 2, we experimentally tested and found a causal path between compassion for humans and proenvironmental intentions. Implications for climate change and protection of nature are discussed.

Understanding the Dark Side of Costly Punishment: The Impact of Individual Differences in Everyday Sadism and Existential Threat

In public goods situations, a specific destructive behaviour reliably emerges when individuals face the possibility of costly punishing others: antisocial punishment, that is, costly punishing cooperative individuals. So far, however, little is known about the individual differences and situational factors that are associated with the dark side of costly punishment. This research deals with this shortcoming. We argue that antisocial punishment reflects the basic characteristics of sadism, namely, aggressive behaviour to dominate and to harm other individuals. We further argue that antisocial punishment may reflect a type of behaviour that allows for the maintenance of self–esteem (through aggressively dominating others). Therefore, we expect that individuals who report a disposition for everyday sadism are particularly likely to engage in antisocial punishment when their self has been threatened (by thinking about ones own death). In a study (N = 99), we found empirical support for this assumption. The present research contributes to a better understanding of antisocial punishment and suggests that sadistic tendencies play a crucial role, especially when the self is (existentially) threatened. Copyright

Less is sometimes more: How repetition of an antismoking advertisement affects attitudes toward smoking and source credibility

Research on effects of message repetition suggested an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of message repetitions and the attitude toward the message content. Furthermore, it was indicated that when people are processing persuasive health messages, they use source credibility as a cue for judgments about the message. Built on that, repetition of an antismoking advertisement should initially increase source credibility and negative attitudes toward smoking. But when repetition rises to an excessive level, source credibility decreases, what in turn should decrease negative attitudes toward smoking. This study (N = 276) provided strong support for the hypothesized inverted U-shaped relationship. This effect was mediated by perceived source credibility and remained unaffected by smoking behavior. Implications are discussed.

Misperceiving Bullshit as Profound Is Associated with Favorable Views of Cruz, Rubio, Trump and Conservatism

The present research investigates the associations between holding favorable views of potential Democratic or Republican candidates for the US presidency 2016 and seeing profoundness in bullshit statements. In this contribution, bullshit is used as a technical term which is defined as communicative expression that lacks content, logic, or truth from the perspective of natural science. We used the Bullshit Receptivity scale (BSR) to measure seeing profoundness in bullshit statements. The BSR scale contains statements that have a correct syntactic structure and seem to be sound and meaningful on first reading but are actually vacuous. Participants (N = 196; obtained via Amazon Mechanical Turk) rated the profoundness of bullshit statements (using the BSR) and provided favorability ratings of three Democratic (Hillary Clinton, Martin O’Malley, and Bernie Sanders) and three Republican candidates for US president (Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and Donald Trump). Participants also completed a measure of political liberalism/conservatism. Results revealed that favorable views of all three Republican candidates were positively related to judging bullshit statements as profound. The smallest correlation was found for Donald Trump. Although we observe a positive association between bullshit and support for the three Democrat candidates, this relationship is both substantively small and statistically insignificant. The general measure of political liberalism/conservatism was also related to judging bullshit statements as profound in that individuals who were more politically conservative had a higher tendency to see profoundness in bullshit statements. Of note, these results were not due to a general tendency among conservatives to see profoundness in everything: Favorable views of Republican candidates and conservatism were not significantly related to profoundness ratings of mundane statements. In contrast, this was the case for Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley. Overall, small-to-medium sized correlations were found, indicating that far from all conservatives see profoundness in bullshit statements.

Old Wine in New Bottles? The Case of Self-compassion and Neuroticism

Research on self–compassion, which is defined as being understanding and kind to oneself when confronted with negative experiences, has produced an impressive number of articles in recent years. This research shows that individual differences in self–compassion, as measured by the Self–Compassion Scale (SCS), are positively related to life satisfaction, health and social functioning. However, a critical and systematic test of self–compassion from a personality perspective has not yet conducted so far. In the present study (N = 576), we (i) tested the factor structure of the SCS, (ii) examined the distinctiveness of self–compassion with regard to the five–factor model of personality, focusing on neuroticism, and (iii) tested the incremental predictive power of self–compassion beyond the five–factor model in the context of life satisfaction. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a two–factor plus six facets solution of self–compassion (a positive factor and a negative factor). Additional analyses revealed that the negative factor was redundant with facets of neuroticism (rs ≥ .85), whereas the positive factor had some unique variance left. However, neither the negative factor nor the positive factor could explain substantial incremental variance in life satisfaction beyond neuroticism. Recommendations for how to use the SCS are provided, and the future of research on self–compassion is discussed. Copyright

Mortality salience increases personal relevance of the norm of reciprocity.

Research on terror management theory found evidence that people under mortality salience strive to live up to salient cultural norms and values, like egalitarianism, pacifism, or helpfulness. A basic, strongly internalized norm in most human societies is the norm of reciprocity: people should support those who supported them (i.e., positive reciprocity), and people should injure those who injured them (i.e., negative reciprocity), respectively. In an experiment (N = 98; 47 women, 51 men), mortality salience overall significantly increased personal relevance of the norm of reciprocity (M = 4.45, SD = 0.65) compared to a control condition (M = 4.19, SD = 0.59). Specifically, under mortality salience there was higher motivation to punish those who treated them unfavourably (negative norm of reciprocity). Unexpectedly, relevance of the norm of positive reciprocity remained unaffected by mortality salience. Implications and limitations are discussed.

The influence of group membership on cross-contextual imitation

Research on mimicry has demonstrated that individuals imitate in-group members more strongly than out-group members. In the present study, we tested whether such top-down modulation also applies for more extreme forms of direct mapping, such as for cross-contextual imitation settings, in which individuals imitate others’ movements without sharing a common goal or context. Models on self-other control suggest that top-down modulations are based merely on a direct link between social sensory processing and imitation. That is, perceived similarities between oneself and another person is sufficient to amplify a shared representation between own and others’ actions, which then trigger imitation. However, motivational accounts explain such findings with the assumption that individuals are motivated to affiliate with others. Because imitation is linked to positive social consequences, individuals should imitate in-group members more strongly than out-group members. We tested these two theoretical accounts against each other by applying a cross-contextual imitation paradigm. The results demonstrate that in-group members are more strongly cross-contextually imitated than out-group members the higher individuals’ motivation to affiliate with the in-group is. This supports motivational models but not self-other control accounts. Further theoretical implications are discussed.

Increasing skepticism toward potential liars: effects of existential threat on veracity judgments and the moderating role of honesty norm activation.

With the present research, we investigated effects of existential threat on veracity judgments. According to several meta-analyses, people judge potentially deceptive messages of other people as true rather than as false (so-called truth bias). This judgmental bias has been shown to depend on how people weigh the error of judging a true message as a lie (error 1) and the error of judging a lie as a true message (error 2). The weight of these errors has been further shown to be affected by situational variables. Given that research on terror management theory has found evidence that mortality salience (MS) increases the sensitivity toward the compliance of cultural norms, especially when they are of focal attention, we assumed that when the honesty norm is activated, MS affects judgmental error weighing and, consequently, judgmental biases. Specifically, activating the norm of honesty should decrease the weight of error 1 (the error of judging a true message as a lie) and increase the weight of error 2 (the error of judging a lie as a true message) when mortality is salient. In a first study, we found initial evidence for this assumption. Furthermore, the change in error weighing should reduce the truth bias, automatically resulting in better detection accuracy of actual lies and worse accuracy of actual true statements. In two further studies, we manipulated MS and honesty norm activation before participants judged several videos containing actual truths or lies. Results revealed evidence for our prediction. Moreover, in Study 3, the truth bias was increased after MS when group solidarity was previously emphasized.

Quid pro quo: The effect of individuals' exchange orientation on prosocial behavior and the moderating role of mortality salience

Individuals high in exchange orientation expect immediate and comparable rewards in order to establish exchange equality after they have provided rewards for others. Therefore, such individuals should be less likely than individuals low in exchange orientation to behave prosocially because doing such usually leads to exchange inequality (i.e., postponement of reciprocal expectations). However, research on terror management theory has indicated that an adherence to prosocial norms increases after mortality salience, especially in situations where those norms are prescribed and cognitively focused. Based on this, we predicted and found evidence that when participants who were high (vs. low) in exchange orientation were directly asked in a face-to-face interaction to donate their participation payment to a charity, they were less likely to donate unless they had first been reminded of their own death.

The risk of male success and failure: How performance outcomes along with a high-status identity affect gender identification, risk behavior, and self-esteem

Previous research has demonstrated that failure on a task may at times increase self-esteem, known as the failure-as-an-asset effect. This effect is observed when high-status group members (e.g., referring to management positions: men) show poor performance in a domain that is seen as a low-status domain—one in which the low-status group (e.g., referring to management positions: women) typically outperforms the high-status group. In line with social identity theory, in this case the poor performance leads high-status group members to a strong identification with the high-status ingroup, resulting in higher state self-esteem. However, social identity theory originally refers not only to self-evaluation, but also to the influence on individual behavior. Building on that, we predicted that if high-status group members show higher ingroup identification after negative individual feedback in a low-status domain, they should also show stronger ingroup prototypical behavior. A great deal of research has indicated that women’s behavior is more risk-averse than is men’s behavior. Thus, men should show riskier behavior after a poor performance on a test in which women outperform men. Two studies support our hypothesis. Men with an alleged individual low performance on a fictitious test reported riskier behavioral intentions (Experiment 1), and actually showed riskier behavior in an investment game (Experiment 2), when men were outperformed by women rather than when women were outperformed by men. The opposite pattern was found for men with an individual positive performance. As predicted, these effects were mediated by men’s gender identification. Practical implications are discussed.